It was two different points, one pint was the miss-conceptions on who wrote the gospels. The other point was assumptions being entered into tradition. I have already addressed the latter.
As for the first point:
Here is how commonly the authors of the gospels are understood:
The Gospel of Mark was composed first between 65-80 CE.
What evidence is used to imply for this particular range ?
The church father Eusebius (late 3rd century CE) is the earliest surviving record in regards to the claim that the Gospel of Mark was written by Mark, a Greek translator and follower of Peter. He quotes from Papias who lived in the early 1st century BCE who said that the book was written after Peter had died and that Mark “wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered”. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him." Thus Eusebius himself quotes that Papias stated that this Mark had never met or seen Jesus himself, i.e. he was not eye witness.
Since Papias is the issue here, not Eusebius, we are speaking of a person aquainted almost directly or very close to the original witnesses. I think you made an honest mistake in identifying Papias as existing in early 1st century BC. He existed during late 1st century AD. Ireneaus, who was a disciple of Polycarp is another who testifies about Papias and claims him to be a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp, the latter also being a hearer of John.Did Ireneaus made a mistake in identifying Papias as being a direct hearer of John? Since Eusebius mentioned that Bishop of Rome Clement (92 - 99) mentions this Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, he may very well have know the apostle John. In any case, he is known to have scurried some informations about Jesus through those who knew directly the apostles.Clement of Rome was one of those people, since we have knowledge that they both knew each other. This should identify, in my opinion, enough evidence for the identity of who the author of Mark’s gospel was, since Clement would have had direct knowledge of this.
The Gospel of Matthew came to us as being anonymous but through church tradition, the apostle Matthew became the recognised author. Later on the Gospel was edited with the text stating that this was the Gospel of Matthew. This however is only church legend and the author was not an eye witness himself. The Gospel was most probably written between 70 CE (after the fall of Jerusalem) and before 110 CE when Ignatius quotes from it.
True, the date for Matthew is a bit trickier; that is, the book of Matthew we have in posession, which came from a greek version. However, the greek version of Matthew comes from a Hebrew version.
Again, the source coming from Papias gives us more than simply a hearsay, since Clement must have been involved in giving such information, and possibly even John himself,although the latter cannot be claimed for certainty.
Nowhere in the Gospel of Luke does it state that Luke the apostle was the author, however this had become accepted church tradition by the late 2nd century. The author is the same author as that of Acts. The author also never states that he is an eye witness at all but that he did a significant amount of research before writing his book (Luke 1:1-4). The Gospel itself is difficult to date but it was most probably written towards the end of the 1st century CE. If Luke relied on the Jewish historian Josephus, then the gospel could have been written as late as 93CE.
If Luke wrote the book of Acts before he wrote his gospel, which is what he claims, then why would he leave out the fall of Jerusalem, the persecution of Nero and most importantly, the martyrdom of the great apostles Paul, Peter and James in his book of Acts, if he did write his gospel in the end of the 1st century?
Both Matthew and Luke used Mark as the source for their gospels in addition to another gospel called Q, which was essentially a collection of Jesus’ sayings. Both Matthew and Luke used Mark as the source for their narrative and Q for their source for Jesus’ sayings. Why would a real eye witness rely on Mark for most of his narrative? Mark was not even an eye witness himself? Why would they need to rely on a sayings gospel when they were there to hear the words for themselves? One could use the argument of old age but by this time your whole theory of the validity of eye witnesses is thrown out of the window.
Certainly Mark would not be reliable to someone who doesn’t believe that he was a hearer of Peter. That is the point; you write as if you proved this has been refuted already. You are not claiming that we don’t know if Papias information is wrong, you are simply assuming it to be wrong without any evidence.
Another problem I find in your reasonig would be that while you have great problems in accepting early testimony of the gospels’ authorship, you have no problem accepting the reality of the Q document, of which absolutely nothing can be shown it to have existed.
So we now know that neither Matthew, Mark or Luke were eye witnesses but based their gospels on older sources.
While Luke doesn’t hide the fact that his information was taken from other sources, the gospel of Matthew doesn’t claim the same. However,I agree that there might be some truth to this.
Andre
…The gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke; the synoptic gospel all claim the same thing almost word for word. Some might argue that it is because one document is simply being a copy for the other two. However, I believe that it is because the event had already been documented and the authors found it important not to change anything from it.